Today’s Yahrtzeits & History – 23 Iyar

Rav (Moshe) Yehoshua Heschel of Dinov (1813). A talmid of Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev and Rav Moshe Leib of Sassov, he served as Av Beis Din of Dinov for twenty years. Among his Chassidim were Rav Tzvi Elimelech of Dinov (the Bnei Yissaschar), who served as one of the dayanim on his court, and Rav Tzvi Hirsch of Ziditchov.

Today in History – 23 Iyar

· Shimon HaChashmona’i drove the Syrians and their allies, the Hellenized Jews, out of the Citadel, their last stronghold in Yerushalayim, in 142 B.C.E.
· Jews of Worms (Vermeize) were attacked by Crusaders, 1096, commemorated in the Kinah “Mi Yitein Roshi Mayim,” we say on Tisha B’Av. Almost the entire community hid in the home of nobleman, but they were slaughtered on Rosh Chodesh Sivan. The community observed a taanis on this date, however, as the beginning of their slaughter.
· Nearly 1200 people died when a German torpedo sank the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania off the Irish coast.
· The Zion Mule Corps, formed of hundreds of Russian and Syrian Jewish refugees from Palestine who had fled from or been expelled by the Turks to Alexandria, was disbanded a year after being formed, 1916.
· The first of over 180,000 Hungarian Jews reached Auschwitz, 1944.
· Amman, capital of Jordan, was bombed by Israel’s air force, 1948.
· The Arab states and Israel agreed to its first truce in 1948. By then, Israel had already scored substantial victories over the Syrian and Egyptian armies, though greatly outnumbered by the enemy.
· Terrorists murder 26 people (22 of them children) at a school in Maalot, 1974.